They've been calling us at least once a week for the past 6 months.  I usually hang up on them.  

This is one of their many numbers they harass you from.  Some of the others are (780) 702-0521 and (780) 702-2897.  I just told them to put me on a Do Not Call list and she told me they don't have one.  Told her not to call and harass us and she asks "Is this how you do business?" Yes if you're harassing me, and I'll keep hanging up and blocking your numbers as well.

They telemarket for Teen Survival Guide, Green Planet for Kids, Drug Facts for Young Kids, Safety Book for Young Children & Children's Book of Celebration.
http://regionalmapleleaf.com/

I receive one call per day from these peole almost immediately after getting my cell phone in Dec., not always the same last 4 digits. I LOATHE receiving unsolicited calls and ABSOLUTELY LOATHE receiving BS calls during the day. I will NEVER answer a call from a number like this on my daytime non free minutes. Gawd I really find telemarketing INTRUSIVE, it is exactly the same as having someone knock on the door unannounced and barging into your living room

I do not work for this company, and have learned about it from an unsolicited call.

I have received a call at 9:47 local time, the caller have been lively, cheerful and friendly.
I have assumed the caller is client calling to deliver a complaint to our HQ,
mostly because that's the kind of calls we receive, aside from couriers and account providers.

Caller have spent a considerable amount of time before getting to the gist of the sales pitch. Topics covered pets, Disney, children, a casual conversation about what our company does.
The "small talk" phase was 3-5 minutes and was very un-annoying, as the person speaking was definitely making a genuine effort for a good predisposition.

The sales pitch was introduced very un-intrusively, I have to admit the caller could go very far in this kind of work, have this been the nineties. My overall impression is, as I hope everyone already guessed, was great (putting aside this being an unsolicited call).

The negative/suggestions to the company:

The sales pitch eventually culminated in an attempt to close, at which point I had to take the lead of the conversation, and realistically let the caller know that any such engagements cannot be easily plunged into over the phone, and thus an introductory e-mail would be in order. They did indeed say that they are not able to use e-mail in this situation, and they had to fall back on a fax option. Which they did send, it was much shorter than my post here, was clearly understandable and the advertisement placement sample was included.

Once I've received the fax, I have checked their website (which deserves a few comments too),
checked their BBB accreditation, since they do post it on their website. BBB accreditation checks out, and apparently business have been operating since 1977:
http://www.bbb.org/edmonton/business-reviews/ ... onton-ab-100528

One thing I would say about the classification on BBB website: "Business Category - Publishers-Book",
which I believe to be incorrect, since the gist of their business, from my limited engagement seems to be advertisement sales over telemarketing. They are not making any money on the actual publication of their free books. In fact that part of the business is definitely a money sink - design costs, printing costs, distribution costs, and no returns on the physical publications.

However they do employ an original artist, they employ a webdesigner (a pretty amateur one), and they employ out-bound calling sales agents (I gather that would be the major share of their work-force).

Drilling down to the core of their business: they are a for-profit organization, the fact that they are engaging in "good faith" publications is a positive and a negative for them. Using their politically correct niche as a sales pitch would be (in my eyes) unethical, since they are in it to make money (like any for-profit business), and publishing in the field of drug awareness and other kid related ailments is only a niche that has been working for them. To make an ethical statement that they are really supporting the causes they claim to support, they would have to go completely non-profit.

Furthermore, as an advertisement agency, they have failed on one crucial aspect of their pitch - the audience reach - basically they said doctor's offices and maybe community centers and so forth - so they do not really have any solid numbers (how can they?); as opposed to let's say the free newspapers getting handed out on public transport. When somebody tries to sell you advertisement, you have to consider the audience, sheer numbers, and effective output of the advertisement dollar. Since they are not able to provide this "estimate", and from guesstimating their reach, it is not exactly in 100,000 people's hands every morning, I doubt that it is something that our company would be interested in.

Their website is about 30% of what I would expect from a successful 21st century kid oriented publisher/advertiser:
The layout (of the kid oriented sites) is really basic, they should consult with YTV.ca and Teletoon.ca
Navigation is redundant, and the redundancy is not well highlighted.
Most of their presentation is Flash, which is nowadays is a waste of developer time.
They do have an iPad app, but judging from their comics, the kid in me definitely put up a good resistance to this "adult propaganda", so something they can do is consult with child psychology studies, and perhaps have more "filler story" to keep the kid engaged, rather than reading walls of text of potentially incorrect cliche statements on drugs.
I almost felt like this website could be aiding kinds on disguising their "newly found toys" away from their parents, I would suggest again to be less intrusive/propaganda like.

Conclusion:
Now-a-days having received an unsolicited sales pitch typically generates a lot more hate than back in the nineties - people are more connected - and thus do not value a 5-10-15 minute conversation with a professional conversationalist. They should have the ability to sent template e-mail (in case the company does not want sales agents to have free reign in what they say in those e-mails).
They should have a complete advertisement pitch, including a well argued reach estimate.
They should not engage in un-ethical approaches (none were used in my conversation, except for maybe keeping me guessing the purpose of the call for good 3-5 minutes) like a hard push on their politically correct publishing niche, pretending to have had previous engagements, leading on to believe to have relations to company other than advertisement.

Also, whoever reads this thread, please take the comments with a grain of salt, many people here claim to have received multiple calls in a short time frame - that is bad, but I'm sure a firm warning to them about further calls will suffice. The use of word scam, entails that some sort of a one-sided transaction takes place - somebody gets money/product and the counter-party gets nothing in return.
This is not true, this company has a valid business model, and operates on the pretenses it has developed over 3 dozen years, and it's only natural that the companies are not yet catching on with the times - unsolicited call = -10 karma points. None-the-less I was impressed with my conversation with them today, and thus I am taking the time to write my thoughts on the matter.

Regards to all angry telephone users =)

I receive one call per day from these peole almost immediately after getting my cell phone in Dec., not always the same last 4 digits. I LOATHE receiving unsolicited calls and ABSOLUTELY LOATHE receiving BS calls during the day. I will NEVER answer a call from a number like this on my daytime non free minutes.
Gawd I really find telemarketing INTRUSIVE, it is exactly the same as having someone knock on the door unannounced and barging into your living room

I tracked the phone numbers down via google, and wrote directly to the Canadian Red Cross for verification of the purpose of the calls, and told them I wanted to advertise directly thru the Can.Red Cross.www.redcross.ca